Meltem Demirors

making benevolent mischief. building products @CoinSharesCo. investing, advising, lurking in the trollbox. teaching @MIT @UniofOxford.

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Book Recommendations:

MD

Recommended by Meltem Demirors

@AriannaSimpson such an incredible book! try shadow divers - similarly captivating (from X)

In August 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew set sail from England for Antarctica, where Shackleton hoped to be the first man to cross the uncharted continent on foot. Five months later, the Endurance - just a day's sail short of its destination - became locked in an island of ice, and its destiny and men became locked in history. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted until it was finally crushed, and Shackleton and his crew made an 850-mile journey in a 20-foot craft through the South Atlantic's worst seas to reach an outpost of civilization. Inspired by the ordeal that Time magazine said "defined heroism," author Alfred Lansing conducted interviews with the crew's surviving members and pored over diaries and personal accounts to create his best-selling book on the miraculous voyage. In Audio Partners' abridged recording of Endurance, reader Patrick Malahide renders a masterful portrayal of these courageous men.

MD

Recommended by Meltem Demirors

@mjamesf @aaolomi !!! djinn ❤️ book 2 of the quantum thief trilogy is a must read (from X)

The Fractal Prince (Jean le Flambeur) book cover
Hannu Rajaniemi

"The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to." A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of "fast ones," shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution. And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not. Jean de Flambeur is back. And he's running out of time. In Hannu Rajaniemi's sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe…and we discover what the future held for Earth.

MD

Recommended by Meltem Demirors

@f0x_society read it. loved it. brilliant book. (from X)

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this "thrilling" (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a "modern Gatsby" swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in "the heist of the century" (Axios). Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is "an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale" (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation. Billion Dollar Whale has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.

MD

Recommended by Meltem Demirors

@stephenduignan @EpsilonTheory the book is pretty great 👍🏾 (from X)

Dune book cover
Frank Herbert

• DUNE: PART TWO • THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Directed by Denis Villeneuve, screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, based on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert • Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Léa Seydoux, with Stellan Skarsgård, with Charlotte Rampling, and Javier Bardem Frank Herbert’s epic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and the bestselling science fiction novel of all time. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides—who would become known as Muad'Dib—and of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

MD

Recommended by Meltem Demirors

finally reading Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and i have basically been crying since i opened my kindle such a beautiful writer and such profound topics. division by zero was my favorite of the collection, but the story the book is titled after is stunning 😍 https://t.co/2c5SuDEfkh (from X)

Ted Chiang's first published story, "Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF. Now, collected here for the first time are all seven of this extraordinary writer's stories so far-plus an eighth story written especially for this volume. What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven-and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang. Stories of your life . . . and others.

MD

Recommended by Meltem Demirors

@amazon 3/ if we look at bitcoin investing, it follows the cyclical trend outlined by the brilliant @CarlotaPrzPerez in her book "technological revolutions and financial bubbles" bitcoin is a secular investment (if you zoom out, up and to the right) that operates in cycles https://t.co/5e0XRUgzae (from X)

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital presents a novel interpretation of the good and bad times in the economy, taking a long-term perspective and linking technology and finance in an original and convincing way.Carlota Perez draws upon Schumpeter's theories of the clustering of innovations to explain why each technological revolution gives rise to a paradigm shift and a 'New Economy' and how these 'opportunity explosions', focused on specific industries, also lead to the recurrence of financial bubbles and crises. These findings are illustrated with examples from the past two centuries: the industrial revolution, the age of steam and railways, the age of steel and electricity, the emergence of mass production and automobiles, and the current information revolution/knowledge society. By analyzing the changing relationship between finance capital and production capital during the emergence, diffusion and assimilation of new technologies throughout the global economic system, this seminal book sheds new light on some of the most pressing economic problems of today. A bold interpretation of how the changing relationship between technological advances and financial capital shapes the patterns of economic cycles, this path-breaking book will provide essential insights for business leaders, policymakers, academics and others concerned with managing change in the world economy.

MD

Recommended by Meltem Demirors

2/ highly recommend this great sci fi book about culture and belief, social consensus, and different states of reality read here (or download since no DRM) 👉🏾https://t.co/MTFMFeRdU4 (from X)

Lady of Mazes book cover
Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder is one of the new stars of hard SF. His novels, Ventus and Permanence, have established him as a new force in the field. Now he extends his reach into Larry Niven territory, returning to the same distant future in which Ventus was set, but employing a broader canvas, to tell the story of Teven Coronal, a ringworld with a huge multiplicity of human civilizations. Brilliant but troubled Livia Kodaly is Teven's only hope against invaders both human and superhuman who would destroy its fragile ecologies and human diversity. Filled with action, ideas, and intellectual energy, Lady of Mazes is the hard SF novel of the year.